Thomas Pow

Research Interests

Tom lives with his wife and two children in Dumfries, a historic town in the south west of Scotland. For most of his career he was a school teacher, with breaks for writing and for travel; but, from 1990 till July of this year, he worked for Glasgow University Dumfries, first as Head of Creative and Cultural Studies and latterly as Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Storytelling. He still has a connection there as an Honorary Senior Research Fellow.

Tom is primarily a poet, but he has also written radio plays, picture books, young adult novels and a travel book about Peru. His last single collection -Dear Alice - Narratives of Madness (Salt, 2008) - won the poetry category of the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Scottish Book of the Year Award last year.In the Becoming, New and Selected Poems(Polygon) was published in the summer of 2009. Since 2007, he has been working on a project concerning dying villages in Europe - www.dyingvillages.com - funded by a Creative Scotland Award. He has also been on the trail of Thomas Watling, Dumfries Convict Forger and Australia's first professional artist. This work - a poetic biography - took Tom to Sydney a couple of years ago and will take him to Kolkata in early 2010.

He is presently working with a film maker on a community project based at a village primary school outside Dumfries.

Visit Tom's own website.